Extreme Listening Mode!

There was more to the 80s than Duran Duran and massive cocaine habits, you know. Scandalously disregarding the work of Sonia, Salamander takes us through the fashions and then goes for a song coming right out of left field.

The 80s, then; the decade of big hair and enough hairspray to have caused the ozone layer to disintegrate, the fashion outrage that was shoulder pads, plastic jewellery, fluorescent leg warmers, flying suits, teabag shoes, dropwaisted skirts, double breasted shirts, boating jackets, Frankie Says Relax t-shirts (not together with the boating jacket, that would have been seriously uncool) and jeans which you spent hours with your mums sewing machine trying to take in to be as tight as humanly possible whilst still being able to get your legs into. Who can forget smelly rubbers, short hair (but worn with a pony tail), Miami Vice, Ford Capri’s, and taping the charts off the radio on a Sunday night with David “Kid” Jensen?

Musically, the 80s brought us New Wave, ska, post-punk, modern romantic, pop and disco there are just too many to pick from.  So with this maelstrom of 80s loveliness I couldn’t make up my mind. In the last few days I have made feasible arguments for loads of songs which could define what the 80s meant including:

• ‘Don’t You Want Me’ by the Human League – possibly one of the greatest pop songs ever written (and lets face it ‘Dare’ was one of those albums that everyone owned in the 80s.)
• ‘Favourite Shirts’ by Haircut 100 – not probably musically significant but significant for me as I was 15 and it was a) my first gig in an over 18s venue and b) my first snog with a man and not a boy.
• ‘What Difference Does It Make’ by The Smiths – One of a hundred songs I could have picked and their ability to influence generations of subsequent artists is unarguable.
• ‘Beat Surrender’ by The Jam – the final single from The Jam, my favourite band in the whole world ever, and probably the biggest sole reason (apart from splitting up temporarily from my boyfriend in 1982) of my teenage angst.
• ‘House of Fun’ by Madness – one of the most remembered pop videos of all time, and considered quite risqué at the time with its mention of box of balloons with a feather light touch.

I could go on and on…but that’s not really the point of this article so I’ll quit messin’ and get to the point. The song I have picked for the 80s is ‘Where is My Mind’ by The Pixies.

Not only is it my favourite Pixies song but it really hasn’t aged at all. The Pixies are widely acknowledged as being one of the most influential bands (albeit commercially unsuccessful) in recent musical history. Their influence over such acts such as Radiohead, Weezer and Blur is well documented along with hundreds of others. However it is their influence on Kurt Cobain which is most widely understood – when writing ‘Smells Like Teen Spiri’t he said in an interview in Rolling Stone magazine:

“I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it [smiles]. When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band — or at least in a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard”

So why ‘Where Is My Mind’ you may ask? It fools you into thinking the lyrics must be deep and meaningful, when actually it was influenced by Black Francis’s scuba diving experience on holiday. I like that. It is also probably their best known song thanks to its inclusion in the film Fight Club (at the end apparently, I haven’t seen it myself but I’ve heard it’s quite a good film….)

And so it has been for countless others – their influence over bands emerging today continues, you will hear it in many different genres and in many different ways, and for that reason it deserves its place in the pop pantheon. That their influence continues to grow is shown in their ever-larger reunion tours; they play places they’d never have been allowed near back in the day. Proper, slinky and psychotic. God bless them.

Filed under: General Stuff Tagged: | 80's, bottoms, capris, Jam, Morrissey, music, Nirvana, Pixies, sausage rolls, Smiths